Review: Sony Xperia T2 Ultra – Phablet Experience

Introduction:

Xperia T2 Ultra, as the name says, is obviously the successor to Xperia T, which was also famous as “Bond Phone”. T2 Ultra doesn’t carry the legacy forward,not a big thing though. Xperia T2 Ultra is also company’s second phablet after Xperia Z Ultra, which was from top end Z-series. T2 Ultra, we can say, brings the phablet experience to the mid-range so more people can afford it. Although a mid-ranger, T2 Ultra does share traits with its elder siblings. With bigger dimensions, Sony’s mid-ranger has equally big price tag. It’s interesting to see why someone should buy it. Continue with us.

Design:

Xperia T2 Ultra is based on Sony’s OmniBalance design, started in 2013 and now spread across its entire portfolio of handsets. Xperia T2 Ultra particularly being bigger, may give you an impression that it is some handset from Xperia Z series. T2 Ultra is still smaller than Z Ultra which had 6.4 inch display whereas the one on the T2 Ultra is 6 inch.
Overall dimensions are 165.2 x 83.8 x 7.65 mm. T2 Ultra is indeed big for average sized palms, of course unless you have palms that would make the phablet look small. Front is taken by a mammoth six inch display. Forget one handed operation with a device this large and accessing corners isn’t really that easy. Display on the T2 Ultra although is a IPS unit, it is very good in terms of contrast ratio, color saturation and viewing angles. Its sunlight legibility was excellent as well. Sony has come long way in displays and its offering good displays even in the mid-range is a great news. Display has HD (720p) resolution which gives pixel density of ~244 ppi. 720p resolution for a display this big feels too little but we couldn’t ask for more at this price point. But the display does have good picture quality.

Near the very top of it is the earpiece grill while mic is under the grill near bottom. Also above the display is a 2MP front facing camera, proximity sensor and a ambient light sensor. There is nothing on the top and bottom sides of the phone.
microUSB port and microSD card slot is on the left. Left side however is crowded. Starting from the top, there is a 3.5mm audio jack, couple of microSIM card slots covered under a flap, power button at the center, a volume rocker next to it and lastly the dedicated shutter key.

Xperia T2 Ultra has a plastic back made up of high quality material. It’s identical to the one on Xperia Z1 Compact. There’s is a 13MP camera on the back with a sliver ring around it and a LED flash.

There is also a secondary mic. Loudspeaker is near bottom. Back picks up scratches quite fast so you’d want to use the device very carefully. Xperia T2 Ultra is first Sony device we’ve seen in recent times to lack the lanyard socket. For a phablet like this, having lanyard socket would have been a good thing.

Hardware, Performance and Battery:

At the heart of Xperia T2 Ultra seats the Snapdragon 400 SoC which has 1.3GHz quad core CPU. It uses four A7 cores. There is 1GB of RAM too to go with it. Specifications are what you get on Moto G or LG L90 which we reviewed recently. Provided its price, it might look costly but overall package is worth it. It has LCD IPS display with 720p HD resolution and added technologies like TRILUMINOUS Display and Mobile Bravia Engine which give better image quality. It also supports “Glove Mode” which comes on high-end phones like Z1 Compact. Sony has tried to give as much value for money as it could give.
Snapdragon 400 isn’t a topper on scoreboards but its’ still good enough to take care of all the tasks you might throw at it. Software is optimized too. Generally it would leave around 400MBs for user needs. For us, T2 Ultra didn’t show any sluggishness in day-to-day usage.

The 3000 mAh battery gives really good life. However, when there wasn’t any SIM in our unit, with no account configured and not on WiFi, it’d drain quite fast. But maybe that was just us. With single SIM at least, it would last around 36 hours before we needed to put it back on charging. This includes phone’s standby too. So excluding the standby, it’d still last for around 18-20 hours of active usage. We are excluding media usage such as music or videos.